In this post we look at what a landing page is, what makes an effective landing page and we look at a few examples of effective landing pages.

What is a Landing Page?

It is where your visitors “land” when the they click on your call to action (CTA) through one of your marketing channels, be it from your paid search, social media, blog, etc. You can also put the URL of landing pages on off-line marketing channels too.

A landing page should be specific to a product or service. While you can land on the homepage of a site, this generally wouldn’t be regarded as a landing page as it isn’t specific (a homepage gives an overview to your business) and this is what differentiates landing pages from web pages. Landing pages are web pages but a web page is not necessarily a landing page.

Why it is Important to Have Landing Pages

As I discussed in my post on online buying cycles, it is important to build your site around a clearly defined user journey that guides users through the buying cycle, converting prospects into customers. You want to make this journey as simple as possible, removing any areas that cause prospects to drop out.

There should be demand generation strategies in place that bring users to your site (often a blend of marketing channels) and you should direct them to a landing page specific to the users enquiry. If for example you have a paid search ad for ‘Televisions’, you want to direct them to a page specifically for ‘Televisions’ or ideally a specific page for that brand of TV or TVs of a certain size. You could be even more specific and direct them to a landing page for a specific TV. If you direct them to your website homepage, you are relying on the user navigating to the television pages and thus presenting them with an opportunity to drop out. It is much easier for them to click the back button in their browser and to click on a different paid search ad, thus causing you to miss out on a sale.

Not only do they aid the user journey, they provide you with specific pages that you can optimise for SEO, increasing the organic ranking and driving more traffic to your website.

What Makes an Effective Landing Page?

This will depend on the company and the marketing campaign however as a general rule, you want to have:

1. Clear Offer  – Your lead generation strategies need to promote a clear offer, helping to drive targeted traffic to your landing page.
2. Content Hook – Once on your landing page, there needs to be an effective content hook, selling the value of your product or service
3. Simple Form – Your content hook has done its job and the user is ready to convert, now you need a simple form to get their contact details (lead generations site) or address and payment information (e-Commerce sites). Complex forms or requiring certain information that users do not want to give can put users off and cause them to drop out of the buying cycle. While I have named this step ‘form’, it may be more appropriate to have a call to action (CTA) button instead like buy now but the principle remains the same.

The more specific a landing page can be, the better the user experience and the greater chance you have to get a user to enter into your buying cycle. A lot of lead generation sites offer free resources, ebooks and similar in order to get prospects to enter into the buying cycle. It is then over to the sales team to nurture and convert these leads.

Landing Page Examples

Going back to my example of televisions; an electronics company with an e-Commerce site may run a Google AdWords campaign for LG smart TVs. They could set up a landing page specifically for ‘Samsung Smart TVs’ where users can buy a TV (I chose a brand at random to illustrate the importance of making your campaign highly targeted and having a landing page specific to the users query to improve user experience and increase the likelihood of converting).

Example 1: John Lewis

Lead generation paid search ad, specific to the enquiry

In this example, John Lewis has directed the user to the exact TV in advertised in the paid search ad. In this scenario, it is not appropriate to have a form and instead they have an ‘add to basket’ and ‘add to wish list’ CTA. Unfortunately these CTAs are below the fold and not visible in the screenshot (best practise to keep CTAs above the fold).

Example 2: Samsung

Lead generation paid search ad, specific to the enquiry

In this example, Samsung have directed the user to a television specific landing page.

Landing pages are an essential part of a website and digital marketing campaign. They help to guide users through the buying cycle in an efficient manner as to encourage conversions. For more free digital marketing advise, signup to our newsletter.